Associations of hospital unit occupancy with inpatient falls and fall-risk assessment completion: a retrospective cohort study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Inpatient fall assessment and prevention efforts are primarily performed by nursing teams. Operating at high occupancy levels may, therefore, reduce the care team's ability to deliver these efforts in a timely and effective way. We investigated the associations of unit-level hospital occupancy with the rate of inpatient fall and the completion of patient fall-risk assessment.

Methods

We conducted a retrospective cohort study using data from a large teaching hospital network in Ontario, between 2017 and 2020. We used a multi-state semi-Markov model to represent the time from admission to inpatient care to primary outcomes of first inpatient fall, and completion of fall-risk assessment in the presence of other competing events. Unit-level occupancy was defined as th

SUBMITTER: Chiu J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12020724 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature